So, one hundred thousand people are paying to read the Times and Sunday Times online – a year after the News Corporation newspapers chose to go behind a £2 a week paywall that the company argued would help secure a long term future for journalism.

It's a commendable figure – suggesting that there is more appetite to pay for news content online that some of the stiffest critics of Wapping's strategy thought when it launched this time last year. However, on the other hand, the free-to-air model is also outperforming with Mail Online now hitting a remarkable 80m monthly uniques.

At this sort of rate, winning over the next 100,000 could take a couple of years – and at a "cover price" that is far lower than readers pay for print. At the news stand, the every day buyer pays £8.70 a week. Revenues from 100,000 online subscribers amounts to a relatively modest £10.4m grossed up.

Yes, theoretically the extra paywall subscribers offset the decline in printed sales for both titles over the past 12 months – the Times gave up 68,695 in headline sales between May 2011 and the same month a year earlier while the Sunday Times dropped a similar 68,150. So, on a gross basis the revenue lost would be £30.7m.

There's plenty more to this calculation - the costs of printing and distributing paper are far higher, but so are the advertising revenues. The cheaper online price may reflect higher potential profit margins to the publisher, but the worry is that consumers will be reluctant to pay much more.

The quick conclusion is this. The paywall is certainly not a failure, but nor is is it obviously a compelling must-follow success.